We welcome everybody here tonight. I think probably there are some here tonight who were not here last night.
I am sharing on the life of Paul in regard to the heavenly vision and obedience to the heavenly vision.
We want to turn first to Acts 26, where we see Paul’s statement regarding the heavenly vision.
Of course, we know that though Paul had many visions and revelations during his lifetime, his whole life and calling were summed up in one heavenly vision. As he speaks to King Agrippa, we turn to Acts 26:15, where Paul says:
“And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.
But arise, and stand upon thy feet: for to this end have I appeared unto thee, to appoint thee a minister and a witness both of the things wherein thou hast seen me, and of the things wherein I will appear unto thee.”
You see in that verse how absolutely important it was for him to see things and then to testify of what he had seen. He was going to testify of what he had already seen, and he was going to testify of what he would see. He was to testify of what he had seen.
“Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom I send thee,
to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive remission of sins and an inheritance among them that are sanctified by faith in me.”
“So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision.” Now he expresses simply his obedience:
“But declared both to them of Damascus first, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the country of Judaea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, doing works worthy of repentance.”
And so, in the simplest way, Paul says, “Out of that heavenly vision, I have been sharing the gospel from place to place—sharing about repentance, sharing about faith in the Lord Jesus.”
Now we want to go to two other passages outside the book of Acts where Paul again shares, in some measure, his testimony. The first is 1 Corinthians 15. There we will read the first ten verses.
“Now I make known unto you, brethren, the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye received, wherein also ye stand,
by which also ye are saved, if ye hold fast the word which I preached unto you, except ye believed in vain.
For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
and that He was buried; and that He hath been raised on the third day according to the scriptures;
and that He appeared to Cephas; then to the twelve;
then He appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now, but some are fallen asleep;
then He appeared to James; then to all the apostles;
and last of all, as unto one born out of due time, He appeared to me also.
For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
But by the grace of God I am what I am: and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not found vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.”
Finally, in Galatians 1, there is another reference to his testimony. We will begin in Galatians 1:11.
“For I make known to you, brethren, as touching the gospel which was preached by me, that it is not after man.
For neither did I receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ.
For ye have heard of my manner of life in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and made havoc of it:
and I advanced in the Jews’ religion beyond many of mine own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers.
But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother’s womb, and called me through His grace,
to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles; straightway I conferred not with flesh and blood:
neither went I up to Jerusalem to them that were apostles before me: but I went away into Arabia; and again I returned unto Damascus.
Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and tarried with him fifteen days.
But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord’s brother.
Now touching the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not.”
The whole point is that his gospel had been received by a revelation of Jesus Christ.
Let us pray.
Our Father, we come to You, and when we are dealing in heavenly matters, it is only Your Spirit that can interpret the things of the Spirit. The natural man has no understanding of what heavenly vision is all about.
But since we are partakers of a heavenly calling, it is time for us, by the Holy Spirit, to consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession—to see these things of heaven in such a way that we find Your purpose being fulfilled here upon this earth.
And so we would ask that Your Holy Spirit would speak to our hearts, give us understanding in our hearts and minds, so that we may know where we are and be faithful—not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but faithful to You, Lord, even now and to the end.
Oh, help us, Lord. Have mercy on us. We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
Last night we tried to share Paul’s initial encounter with the Lord on the road to Damascus. There is much to say, and much that is a mystery.
You know, it is just like our natural man that we would like all the details. “Now, Paul, what did Jesus look like?” But in fact, we do not even know whether Paul saw a face or His eyes. All we know for sure is that there was a bright light from heaven.
This light was so full of glory that they all fell down to the ground as a result. So we know this was a tremendous impartation of heavenly glory, and we know also that there was a voice speaking to him.
When we look at the record carefully, we see that here was this man completely undone before this Lord, whose name was Jesus. This One whom he had been persecuting, standing against, and even hating, was now coming to him in love—coming to him as a Master.
And saying, in the most loving and merciful way, “Saul, Saul, you are under arrest. You cannot kick against Me.”
And Saul knew that.
After he sat in the dust for a while, trying to survey what had happened, he said, “Lord, what would You have me to do?”
So we looked, in a very small way, at the fact that the Lord began a process of devastation and reconstitution in Paul’s life.
We tried to make the point that this devastating process, despite its depth, despite its seriousness, and despite the fact that it was a lifelong process, was a qualifying devastation.
Paul had to find that all he thought was gain was loss in order to be able to say, “Now I have got one thing: I want to gain Christ and be found in Him.”
By this great light from heaven, and by the result of this saving and sanctifying work in Saul on the road to Damascus, he was stripped of all that baggage of traditions, rituals, and strivings of the past.
He found, as he went on in his life, that his motives became more and more simple until, of course, he came to that point—as he shares his testimony as Paul the aged—where he says, “I am down to one thing. This one thing I do.”
And so the Lord arrested Saul by His love and called him. He said, “I want to use you now.”
We also understand—and we will look at it a little bit tonight—that the whole ministry of Paul’s master building, and the wisdom he had in this master building, came as a result of his being willing to bear the cross, wait for the Lord, listen for the Lord, and wait before the Lord.
Over those first eleven years, as we mentioned last night, Paul’s life can roughly be broken into three periods of eleven years. After his conversion, at thirty years old, until he was about forty-one—something like that—he was basically in a time of preparation.
He spent time in the desert and time at home in Tarsus. He served the Lord. There were times, I am sure, in Tarsus where he was a brother in the assembly. But his life was basically restricted, in an awaiting pattern, as the Lord was showing him things.
Tonight we come to the second phase of Paul’s life as a Christian, where for about eleven years he was very much running the race, serving the Lord, and traveling about on that Herculean odyssey. It is hard to believe that a man could make such a trip.
A few years back, some of the saints who are here tonight and I went on a trip where we traveled by bus to all the places the Apostle Paul visited. We were worn out—and we were just sitting on an air-conditioned bus.
But he had such resolve. He had such ministry. It is legend. We could spend the rest of the evening just mentioning places, things that he had done, and all that sort of thing. But this is the stage we are going to look at tonight.
I want to stress the absolute necessity of heavenly vision in order to do the wise master building that God wants done in this final day, as He waits for that bride to be prepared for His Son.
Today the Lord is doing many things. The Lord of the harvest has sent out many workers. As we even tried to chronicle a little bit briefly last year, the Lord is doing a tremendous harvest across the world even as we speak.
Many, many people are being swept into the kingdom as faithful servants—big and small, educated and uneducated—go out among the common people and share the gospel.
They find the grace of God and faithfulness to share, even with signs following and wonders. Amazing things are happening all about the world as this kingdom is being built and the servants are serving.
But if we would be faithful to the whole counsel of God, then we need to be faithful to ask this question: What is the fruit of all this kingdom work?
We know in the Word of God that the fruit of kingdom service is the building up of the church. So we ask the question: Where is this church, in reality, in its beauty, in its maturity, and in its holiness?
Where is this church described in Ephesians 5, without spot or wrinkle?
We find a tragedy in our midst, I must say. Although we have to say that the Lord is doing much more than you and I can ever know, even at this present hour in these last days, as people are being swept into the kingdom, they should be gathered together into His church.
There, they should allow the life of the Lord Himself to build up these people, and through ministry, in the exercise of faithfulness by the grace of God, come into a state of maturity.
But in fact, when we look all about the world, we see a church in such confusion that we have to say the gospel work is being done. Thank God for faithful service.
But when it comes to the matter of building the church, is there heavenly vision out of which this church can be built with wisdom?
You know that so much of what is called the church is not even the church. What are called church meetings are more kingdom meetings, focused on ministry.
In New York City, where I live, I have had occasion to meet a few hundred very faithful servants of God—up in the Bronx, down in Brooklyn, and all over the place—preaching the gospel and sharing.
One man I know is a taxicab driver, and at night he preaches the gospel in Washington Square Park. About ten of our young people go over there and help him witness and share the gospel.
There are many, many faithful servants of God in New York City. But when you look at the church in New York City, it is an absolute ruin.
There are thousands. The number of churches in New York City is uncountable—hopelessly divided into little groups.
It would be like the twelve tribes of Israel had entered the promised land and then split up into family households. Now you have four thousand and twenty-six households in the land of Canaan, each one a small little group: “We have taken a hill.”
They are engaged in guerrilla warfare, each one fighting—some winning, some losing—but with that general overall weakness we see in the Book of Judges, when every man is doing what is right in his own eyes and there is no king.
Because it is so fractured, we even have a strategy of fracturing that fractures it more and more. We have niche churches that come in.
I saw on the internet the other day that there is another one now in New York City. It is called Forefront, and the way it advertised itself was, “The Forefront Church: where people who do not like church.”
There are so many of these, it goes beyond saying. Then when you get down to ethnic groups, there is division and division.
Now, in the United States—I know this is a unique problem—but among Hispanic works, they are just divided hopelessly. It is very rare that you find precious brothers who are Mexicans joining with those who are Ecuadorians. They all carry on their separate little things, and then these groups divide and divide and divide. Every storefront seems to be taken with yet another little church.
Well, who sees this heavenly vision? Is that the heavenly vision of the church?
On occasion, when I dared to be so bold—it is none of my business, really; these men are doing what they are doing—but since we have lunch together after a prayer meeting, I ask these fellows questions.
They are always asking questions like, “How many people are coming?” and all of this. But I ask different questions.
I ask questions like, “What do you think about the unity of the Body of Christ, even as Jesus prayed it in John 17?” You know, just a conversation starter.
And amazingly—I say this in all honesty—there is so much sympathetic understanding for the heavenly vision.
Many of these brothers and sisters, including many sister pastors there, openly say, “You know what? I read some books by Watchman Nee. I loved what he had to say. I read The Normal Christian Church Life. It was beautiful.”
I say, “Well, what about it?”
Eventually, when we talk it out, they say this: “You know what? This kind of vision is beautiful. It captures us. We are so sympathetic with it, but we just do not understand any earthly, practical way it can happen. So we just do our own thing.”
Now, I understand that.
My brother Ernie Heil and I, even when we were in seminary, had some fellow feeding us books by Watchman Nee. We were reading some things that were way over our heads.
But what little we understood, I felt very sympathetic toward. Honestly, though, I did not see any way that a Baptist church could ever be that way.
The Lord has to lay hold of us and take us out of this confusion by an unveiling of Himself and an unveiling of His church. That is what we know as the heavenly vision.
Have you seen the vision of Christ, the glorious Christ? Have you seen a vision of Christ, the corporate Christ—as one, as perfect, as beautiful? Have you seen these things?
Then we have to ask the question: Are we willing to bear the cross to be participants in that which is impossible for man and only possible with God?
For when we see the heavenly vision, we do not see something that can possibly be done on earth by man’s machinations, programs, and plans.
There is something there so organic, with its origins in God, that unless we allow the cross to deal with all our prejudices and all our laziness, all we can do is look at this vision from afar and be sympathetic with it.
But I tell you in Jesus’ name: the Lord is not satisfied with us standing back in sympathy toward some idealistic vision. Rather, He wants us not only to see Him in His glory but to find ourselves participating in this heavenly vision.
Are you? Are you a participant in this heavenly vision? Do you see Christ in this church, and do you see yourself living and laying hold of this reality?
That is the only way it can be: a heavenly vision that we take hold of.
We are all familiar with the words of the Apostle Paul in Philippians, where he says, “I reach forward that I may lay hold of that for which I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.”
We understand that this has to do very much with two things.
First, to lay hold of Christ Himself in His fullness. Having been laid hold of by Christ, Paul was now running on the upward call in Christ Jesus to lay hold of Christ the Person—the Christ of glory, the Christ in fullness. He was running after Christ. There is no doubt about that.
But he was also trying to lay hold of this specific, unique reason that he had been brought into it.
“I have been arrested for a purpose, and I am running to fulfill that purpose—to fulfill my ministry.”
So it was not just that he was running after Christ. There are many people who are very Christ-centered and say, “I just want Christ. I want all of Christ. I want Christ in His fullness.”
But I tell you, a heavenly vision is more than that. It is running after your place in Christ.
That involves a cross. That involves a devastation. That involves the Lord working in our lives.
Now we are going to share tonight from that second perspective of Paul, now released. There he was in his early forties when Barnabas brought him down from Tarsus. He came down to Antioch, and it says he worked there for more than a year.
He was in submission to Barnabas and to the brethren in Antioch, and the Lord did a wonderful work. Many people were saved, and this is where people were first called Christians.
What a tremendous experience for Paul, to be gathered and co-working together with his fellow teachers and prophets in the church of Antioch. It was an amazing, amazing time. Paul learned so much.
But then, of course, there came the day when they were worshiping the Lord, and the Lord said, “Separate for Me Saul and Barnabas for the work whereunto I have called them.”
They fasted, prayed, and sent them out, because the Lord was saying, “Come, come out this way.”
Saul and Barnabas began by going down to Cyprus, and then you know about the first journey they took together.
We are now in that second stage where we see Paul serving with such quantity of ministry, such quality of ministry, such wisdom in ministry, and such fruit in his ministry—not only fruit, but abiding fruit in his ministry.
Oh, here is a man prepared by God, no doubt about it.
What I want to share tonight is that, because of the heavenly vision’s effect on his life, Paul’s life was marked by eccentric originality.
I mentioned that last night. Of course, now I must explain what that means, because it means something different today.
The word eccentric today in English means something off-center. Somebody is a little bit, you know, not all his oars are in the water, as we say.
Originally, the word is very simple. It means “out from the center.”
I am using it to express Paul’s life because in his ministry, his ministry always came out from the center, and the center was Christ.
That was his fountainhead, his source, his center, the basis of his ministry, the basis of his gospel, and the basis of his hope: Christ, Christ, Christ.
There is not a man in the Scriptures, of course, who ever mentioned the name Christ as much as Paul. Everything was “in Christ” or “Christ in you.”
He was centered, and out of that center came everything. This is a tremendous, tremendous reality.
Of course, Paul was considered off-center. He was an eccentric by man’s standards. You know why? Because man’s center is always self-centered.
When we touch somebody else who is self-centered, we say, “Hey, they are just like us.” But when you find somebody Christ-centered, they are eccentric. They are off-center to the world.
But God is looking for eccentrics who are centered in Christ. When you are centered in Christ, you are a peculiar possession. You are different. Your source is different. Your motives are different. Your starting point is different. Your initiatives are different.
Eccentric.
The second word I put together with it is originality, meaning that which comes from an origin in Christ.
Because it comes from an origin, because it has touched its source and touched that origin, what comes out of it—what issues out in ministry or whatever it is—is fresh. It is living. It is alive. It is real.
Eccentric originality: this is the mark of somebody who has been laid hold of by heavenly vision.
Every time you see somebody who has truly been laid hold of, there is something very original about them—the way they share, or just the whole way God comes through their lives.
Something has happened, you see, at the very source that makes them original. We have so many cookie-cutter Christians who all act alike, believe alike, say alike, and are all so predictable. They wear the same clothes. They pray the same prayers.
Then there is somebody who has been in the throne room, and they come out, and there is something different about them—even when they say the same word.
Oh, the Lord. Here is something we have a very hard time laying hold of, but I have to say it because it is the truth in Christ Jesus: part of that originality has to do with who you are.
If you are actually caught up and find yourself participating in this eternal purpose of God through this heavenly vision, then there is something very original about you that God is able to mine out of you.
You see, you are a very original person. God has laid hold of you for a very specific purpose.
Now, we would not all claim to be the Apostle Paul, or even think anything like we could be as he was. But every one of us has a purpose—a key purpose.
I love some of the lesser-known people in Scripture who are faithful all their lives, and then they are called upon to act. They have their fifteen minutes of fame, and you realize their whole life was in preparation for that.
It was like Ananias in Damascus, who came and prayed for Brother Saul by faith. He had been prepared all his life for that.
There is a reason why, if you have been apprehended by vision, you have been apprehended. There is something uniquely of use to the Lord, and He has laid hold of you for that purpose.
Now, do you know what that purpose is? Surely it is more than just to sit in the crowd. It could be something very small, but something unique.
We see in Paul this kind of originality because he was touching this original source—this eccentric originality.
I would like to make a comparison between Paul’s vision and John’s vision. Because Paul was an eccentric, his vision began with the universal and elucidated and worked its way out into the particular.
Because Paul was a wise master builder, he had to understand the particulars of how the church is built. But he saw it from the universal, revealed and worked out into the particular. This was Paul’s genius, and there was not another like him in this.
But then, just as valid and necessary, some fifty years later John came along and began to write, and we have his Gospel and letters. The reason was that now the particulars had been worked out. There were ministries, meetings, and traditions.
These meetings, ministries, offices, and traditions were losing their reality.
So John collected a number of particulars and showed how they took on meaning only in that universal “I AM,” in the transforming work of Christ.
He takes a marriage and brings Christ into it. He takes bread and talks about the bread of heaven. He takes a Jewish feast, and Jesus says, “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.”
The “I AM” comes into the particulars of our lives and transforms them. John’s burden was to recover a church that was losing its vitality because it was focusing on the particulars. We focus on outward things almost immediately unless we have a vision of the “I AM,” in order to maintain and hold on to that tremendous, transcendent reality behind the particulars of our own lives.
There was no man so marked by this eccentric originality as the Apostle Paul.
When we look at the Apostle Paul and his life, we realize what he said and testified to in Galatians 1: the Lord laid hold of him from his mother’s womb. The Lord knew him and had a purpose for him. His whole life was a preparation for what he was to do.
He grew up at a crossroads of three tremendous civilizations in Tarsus. The Roman roads and the Roman Empire were all around him. Would you not know it? Just in the circumstances of life, Paul was a Roman citizen.
But the whole culture and language were Greek. At Tarsus, Greek was spoken even in the synagogues, Greek culture was understood, and Paul obviously had some kind of training in Greek philosophy and such things.
Yet there was also that very important move of God that had spread the Jews throughout the Dispersion. Everywhere they went, they had synagogues.
How could all of that be united—all those Jews in the Dispersion, and the God-fearing Gentiles standing around, waiting for something to happen? Saul of Tarsus was born right at the crossroads of that whole thing.
We realize he was chosen by God. We do not know too much about his upbringing, but there are some things we could say.
He had great respect for his background—a Hebrew of the Hebrews, his Benjamite background, and all of that. He probably grew up in a very religious, devout Jewish family. He learned discipline in his life: discipline of study and responsibility.
As a young man, he was apprenticed by his father, as all young men were, and he learned how to build tents.
But this young man was obviously most extraordinary, unique in many more ways than we really know. When the time came and he felt his serious call to be a rabbi, he went to the best—to the top.
To become a Pharisee was to become the very top of Judaism, and he studied under Gamaliel. There were two great rabbis in Jerusalem at the time, and Gamaliel was one of them.
He trained under Gamaliel. He was interned under Gamaliel. This young man studied the Word of God and led a life of discipline. He learned how to hold himself in order to gain mastery over whatever temptations might come his way.
This was a young man who was trained—prepared by God.
The main thing we have to say, I believe, is that from his birth Saul of Tarsus had a certain kind of genius.
Now, the Lord does not call many geniuses. Even among those He calls, a lot of them go off the deep end. Not many are called who are geniuses. But this young man was.
He had a certain kind of genius in his mind—this logical, rational ability to work things out, a hunger to know, and a hunger to understand.
Because he was in the traditions of the Jews, the Jews gave him plenty of exercise at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. At that time, Jewish liturgy and tradition were expanding exponentially.
From the study of the Mishnah and the Talmud to all the traditions of what the rabbis were saying, it was a lifelong, life-dedicated study: memorizing Scripture, studying the rabbis, and more.
Saul’s great mind was able to wrap itself around all that.
But what happened when he saw the heavenly vision and lost the habit of going to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? He was trained by the Holy Spirit how to eat from the tree of life.
Do you know what happened to that mind? Now, studying the Word of God, with the Holy Spirit opening up the Word of God to this man, it was probably more than his mortal body could bear.
You and I know, as ordinary Christians, what a tremendous experience it is when we are reading and studying the Word of God and the Lord reveals something to us. It is marvelous. It puts us on a high for at least a couple of days.
Saul had such a great mind. It just so happened that at that season of the church’s growth, somewhere in its first dozen years, the church needed something more than just simple answers.
Along came this man who could not rest until he understood it. It became the basis for our understanding of the foundation of salvation and of the foundation of the church.
This is an extraordinary man, and God chose him for this hour.
Now, I want to look at a couple of things about this, but I also want to say that the gospel basically is very simple.
In 1 Corinthians 15, we read Paul’s own declaration of what he says is of first importance. It is interesting how he puts it: Christ died for us according to the Scriptures. It is not just his idea; it is according to the Scriptures. He was buried and raised again in three days according to the Scriptures.
That is as simple as the gospel can be. Peter used to preach a simple gospel. John and the others, probably Barnabas, preached the gospel. Many people were saved.
The gospel is simple. It is never to become some great Gnostic intellectual study. Men are saved by faith in Jesus Christ.
People would come to Peter and say, “Who is Jesus?” He would say, “The Messiah.” They would say, “Amen.”
They would come to John and say, “Who is Jesus?” He would say, “The Son of God.” They would say, “Amen.” Simple answers.
“What did He do on the cross?” “He died for your sins.” “Oh, praise God.”
When the Apostle Paul came along and experienced these same things, there was something in him that said, “But why?”
Now, you know he had to bear a cross, because the Lord was not going to reveal the whole thing in one day. But he searched the Scriptures.
I hear the echo of his own life when, just before he passed away, he told Timothy, “Study to show thyself approved unto God.” Grab hold of the Word of God and let God reveal it to you, so that you will be able to rightly divide the word of truth.
Paul learned this lesson in his life.
In the end, he grabbed hold of this revelation he had of Christ and the Word of God, and he gained a gospel so unique that he could say, “I received my gospel not from man, nor was I taught it by man, but I had a revelation of Jesus Christ. That is my gospel.”
Now, that is original.
I want to mention three issues in which we find the Apostle Paul giving us great light in the gospel. It was because of this unquenchable hunger he had to get to the truth.
The first issue on which Paul gave us great light in our understanding of salvation is righteousness.
This was the great Jewish obsession. Paul was obsessed with righteousness. He had a zeal for righteousness. He wanted to be approved before God.
It was like Saul, when he was confronted by Jesus on the road to Damascus, saying, “What would You have me to do?” He was willing to do anything in order to obtain approval.
That is the understanding that we can work our salvation, that we can do ourselves into righteousness—the great obsession.
Well, the Lord had to undo that whole thing. You can imagine his righteousness falling before him as filthy rags. All his trying to be righteous fell away as God broke the obsession of his righteousness. He realized that all his righteousness was unrighteousness.
Yet he felt justified. He felt forgiven as Ananias prayed, and he looked up into Ananias’ eyes and saw a loving brother. Then they sat down and ate with Saul, and he stayed there in Damascus for a number of days. They all forgave him.
“How am I forgiven? How am I justified?”
You say, “Okay, you are forgiven.” But Saul says, “Wait, I have got to understand this. I have got to understand this.”
Oh, how wonderful. This is the way Paul ran after Jesus. Having seen the heavenly vision, he did not just go off by himself. He went back to the origins. He went back to the center. He said, “Lord, You must impress upon me: how does this work?”
In Acts 22, as he shares his testimony, Ananias speaks to him in Damascus:
“The God of our fathers hath appointed thee to know His will, and to see the Righteous One, and to hear a voice from His mouth.”
Paul understood that he was justified. But when he pressed into the Lord to understand this, I imagine it came about this way in his understanding of righteousness: he came to understand that righteousness is a Person.
He saw the Righteous One.
Then he realized that he was in Christ, who was the Righteous One. Could this be possible—that Jesus was made sin, that I might be made the righteousness of God? How does this happen?
Then he saw the Righteous One. Jesus is the Righteous One.
I will put it this way, because this is a common Keswick phrase: I think Paul was the first Keswick who understood not merely that Jesus was his Savior, but that Jesus was his salvation.
He is my righteousness. Because I am in Christ, I am righteous. I am robed in righteousness. It is not a question of deserving; it is a question of simple faith.
Paul gives us this tremendous gospel: we have been justified by faith in Christ. Look at how he opens up the righteousness of God in Romans 3.
He explains how God can be righteous and the Justifier of those who have faith. “Just” and “righteous” are the same word. He says, “I have to tell you, I worked it out. I figured it out. How could God be righteous and still make us righteous?”
He did it by sending His own Son to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God. That is how He did it. “I understand. I see it.”
Oh, what a liberating gospel. Paul conveyed a new aspect of the righteousness of God that had not been clearly seen before: not only that God is righteous Himself, and not only that God acts righteously, but that God in His grace and love makes righteous that which was sinful by the death of His Son on the cross.
But it did not stop there. Paul was saved, yet he was struggling with sin and struggling with the flesh. He would hear the law say, “Do this,” and immediately he did not want to do it. He sensed that rebellion.
It was Paul who came to this original understanding: “Wait a minute, this is not about sins. I know about sins. This is about sin.”
There is something in my life. But wait a minute: sin is that indwelling force of Adam, of fallen man. It cannot be dealt with.
But wait a minute. When Jesus died on the cross, He did not just die for me. When He died, Adam died. That was me. I was in there.
As he sat before the Lord, he came to see it: “When Christ died, I died with Him. In Adam, the old man is crucified. I have been crucified with Christ.”
Then he thinks, “Wait a minute. Jesus came out of the ground. What happened then? A new creation. A new man was born. Wait a minute. I am in that new man by faith.”
“The old man is crucified. Nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”
Now, wait a minute. The law used to speak to me as the old man, but now there is a new law. What is that new law? Christ dwelling in me. His Spirit is giving me laws, and He is giving me the grace to fulfill those laws.
Paul came into a deliverance from sins, from sin, and from the old man into the new man. All these things are shared, and it is all eccentrically original.
I think Peter just shook his head and said, “Whew. I have been wondering why I was struggling so much myself.”
Oh, there is a mind that will not stop until he is at the Holy of Holies and the Lord shows Himself. Precious Paul.
Another amazing, original aspect was found in that very heavenly vision. The vision was not only on the road to Damascus; it included what happened in the house when Ananias came.
In that moment of heavenly vision, the Lord spoke to Paul and said, “I am sending you away to the Gentiles.”
Now that had to bother him for a good while. “I see now. I am not good enough to be with the real saints. The Lord has sent me off into minor-league ball, sending me out to the Gentiles.”
When he went down to Jerusalem and met Barnabas and the brothers for a couple of days, he started preaching and got into all kinds of trouble.
The Lord had to appear to him again in the night and say, “Paul, get away. Go home to Tarsus. I have sent you away to the Gentiles.”
“I just tried to visit Jerusalem. What is going on, Lord? Why are You sending me to the Gentiles?” At this point in his life, they did not even understand. Why? Second class?
But the Lord had to undo, in a devastating way, all that Jewish pride in Paul. All that “Hebrew of the Hebrews,” “tribe of Benjamin,” “as to righteousness, blameless”—all that stuff had become refuse.
He found himself a sinner saved by grace. He found himself in such a place that he could cut his way out of the web of Judaism, which is a spiritual principle regarding the bondage—the religious bondage—of all mankind that tries to gain approval through works.
Having been set free from that, the Lord began to open his eyes. Paul sat before the Lord in his typical eccentric originality and said, “Now, Lord, here we have some Scripture. What does this mean?”
The Lord began to show things to Paul that were tremendous.
We must at least see what he says in Ephesians 3, as he makes note of this particular stewardship to the Gentiles.
“For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of you Gentiles—
if so be that ye have heard of the dispensation of that grace of God which was given me to you-ward;
how that by revelation was made known unto me the mystery, as I wrote before in few words,
whereby, when ye read, ye can perceive my understanding in the mystery of Christ;
which in other generations was not made known unto the sons of men, as it hath now been revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit.”
And here it is, to be specific—three words:
“That the Gentiles are fellow-heirs, and fellow-members of the body, and fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”
I believe this was the revelation that made him go down to Jerusalem. In Galatians 2, Paul says that because of a revelation he went down to Jerusalem to speak to the apostles and lay out before them the gospel he had received, just in case he had been running in vain.
He wanted to submit this gospel before them because it was so tremendous that he wanted to be sure about it.
What is the essence of the gospel? Again, Ephesians 3:6: the Gentiles are fellow heirs with Abraham.
Peter and James might say, “Wait a minute. You are saying the Gentiles are now part of the tribe of Israel by faith? They are fellow heirs? What Abraham is going to get, they are going to get? Is that what you are saying?”
Paul says, “The Lord showed it to me,” and then he produces the Scriptures.
They are fellow members of the Body of Christ. “Wait, wait, wait. You mean in the same one church, one body—the Gentiles and the Jews?”
These things were blinding revelations. The walls came tumbling down. There is no Messianic church and Gentile church. There is only one church.
Paul staked his life on that revelation. Though it was hard, I wonder what would have happened if Paul had not come along with these things.
I know this is foolish thinking, but what would have happened if Cornelius had come along and Peter had said, “Well, this is an exceptional thing. We doubt it will happen again”?
What would have happened if Antioch had developed as it did, with Gentiles getting saved? They sent men up to check out what was happening, and they said, “Yes, this is obviously the Lord.”
But then those from the party of James come up, and Peter and Barnabas say, “Yes, we need to eat separately.” What would have happened next? Would Antioch have become a group of circumcised Gentiles?
But when Paul shared this revelation he had received—that the Gentiles were fully, one hundred percent fellow heirs with Abraham, fully one hundred percent members of the Body of Christ, and fully one hundred percent partakers of the promise of the kingdom to come, of the Bride, the marriage, and eternity ahead—the matter was settled.
It says in Galatians 2 that Peter, James, and John gave him the right hand of fellowship. They were amazed at this revelation.
Could you even conceive that any Jew could possibly have made such a statement? Could anybody be a steward of this liberating gospel of the Gentiles—this universal gospel?
Paul just blew all the walls off the gospel’s limitations by this eccentric originality. Oh, how he had to stand for it. Oh, how he suffered for it. Oh, how he went to jail for it. Oh, how he died because of it.
But this is something he saw.
We do not have time tonight, but you can look at the last half of Romans 10. You can see the Scriptures from Isaiah, Deuteronomy, and the Psalms that Paul put together—this argument of how the Lord had gone and accepted the Gentiles who did not even seek Him.
You can read that on your own. You see some of the Scriptures Paul had to wrestle with before the Lord: “Lord, what does this mean? How could this be?” And the Lord showed it.
A third original understanding that Paul gave us, of course, was the whole nature of the church.
Up to this time, there was great gospel work being done in Jerusalem, Antioch, and other places. Many people were being saved, and they were gathered into the church by the Holy Spirit. They were experiencing church life in a wonderful way.
In those early days of church life, so much takes place simply by following the Spirit, by the instinct of things. But there had to come an understanding of the nature of this church.
When Saul was saved, came into fellowship with the brethren in Damascus, and later in Tarsus, and when he met Barnabas, he sensed there was a relationship, a oneness, a love, and a giving that he had never quite experienced before.
“Why? What is the basis of our fellowship? Why is it that when two or three are gathered together, the Lord’s presence is so wonderfully in our midst? What is the reason for this?”
You see, he asked these questions.
As he experienced this kind of fellowship, union, and life as people gathered together, he went back again to that original heavenly vision where he saw the Lord.
He realized that this was a union greater than synagogue community, greater than even family ties.
We, as Christians, bound together by one Spirit, have been incorporated together into a living Body of Christ. That is it.
Jesus is still alive and on this earth in His Body. The church is the living organism. It is the Lord Himself now in His church.
This was Paul’s original revelation and contribution to the whole matter of the nature of the church: how this heavenly vision affected Paul’s life, and how this heavenly vision should affect our lives.
Do we see what is involved in the church under this heavenly vision?
How differently we would treat our brethren if we truly saw it. How much more freely we would give one to another if we really understood. How much more ready we would be to submit to one another if we really saw this heavenly vision.
How much more willing would we be to be disciplined, that we might be flowing only in the life of the Lord, with nothing extraneous and of the flesh?
If we really saw this heavenly vision, we would be willing to let go of things that separate us—our own little kingdoms, our own little trouble things, and our own little comfortable things.
When we see a heavenly vision of the true nature of the church, it basically brings the cross to bear on almost every—no, on every—aspect of church life.
For the Lord to have His reality among God’s people, we have to be able to stand under that heavenly vision and then work it out in the particulars.
You cannot see this and then live in some kind of compromise situation and think you are being obedient to heavenly vision. There is a great cost in this.
I have mentioned these three original things that came out of Paul’s eccentric originality, but his whole life was original.
Yet he was tempted, just as you and I would be tempted, to disobey the heavenly vision. There is a great cost to this.
Consider, for starters, since we talked about this intellectual side, the temptation Paul would have had to make Christianity intellectual.
But he never moved beyond the boundaries of the revelation he had received. He lived under the restraint of the Lord Jesus. He lived under the restraint of the mystery of God.
Men with great minds, if they are not placed under restraint, extrapolate beyond what revelation gives them and go into error.
Consider the doctrines of Christ, where people go wrong. Imagine him seeing Jesus on the road, and Jesus saying, “I am Jesus.” This emphasizes the humanity of our Lord.
Suppose he had become obsessed with this and started talking about the humanity of Jesus to the point of denying His divinity. Or suppose, because it was the heavenly Shekinah, he had emphasized Christ’s divinity to the point where the human was lost.
But he always stayed under this vision of Christ, who was human and divine.
He never went out beyond these restraints that the Lord placed on his great, great mind. Thus he did not disobey the heavenly vision.
Beyond that, you can think of so many ways he could have compromised.
How would you feel if you were five foot one—as I am saying the Apostle Paul was—and you were in Antioch and had to confront Peter, who was six foot two?
Not only in physical size, but in spiritual stature. You, the young upstart, with a revelation in your heart, seeing how the particulars work out in fellowship life—and Peter is there with the saints, simple and full-hearted.
Then, when the Jews came up from Jerusalem, Peter started to separate himself from the Gentiles.
It would be so easy to say, “Well, I do not want to disrespect Peter.”
Yet Saul got up on a folding chair, looked right at the Apostle Peter, and said, “Peter, shame on you. This gospel that says we are saved by grace, by believing in Jesus—you are perverting it by making a distinction between Jew and Gentile.”
Now, is that a cross—to be willing to do that?
Or to go from church to church and preach a gospel, only to have Judaizers come behind him and preach another gospel, and still stand in the truth of the gospel as he proclaims it in Galatians?
He was tempted. There were moments where he could have compromised so easily. He could have gotten out of jail with a simple compromise. He knew that the governor really just wanted a bribe, and he would let him go.
It is so easy to do things that way. But no—Paul was captured by this heavenly vision, and he would run under that vision right to the end. He would not compromise.
Another way that, during his time of running the race, he could have disobeyed the heavenly vision was simply to make much of himself, his accomplishment, and his authority.
There were some supposed apostles, some false apostles, who made much of who they were.
They could go to assemblies, demand money, abuse the saints, and the saints would say, “Oh, what a man of God.”
But Paul would go somewhere and lay his life down. He would even build tents if he needed to. He would talk with somebody all night, plead with people, be merciful and kind, instruct and instruct, help, and pray.
People would say, “You know, he is not much of an apostle.”
Oh, listen: Paul was under this devastation. In this whole ministry, he was under an understanding that if he did not have the source, if he were not at the center, then he had nothing.
When it came to push and shove, and some people were pushing, he could not shove back. He was a man willing to bear the cross, not making much of himself.
We want to read two verses that give us some understanding of what enabled Paul to stay centered during his fruitful ministry, when people were ready to worship him if he were willing.
The first is 1 Corinthians 15:10, which we read earlier:
“But by the grace of God I am what I am: and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not found vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.”
Paul was a man of tremendous ministry and tremendous accomplishment, but he was centered in Christ and very aware of the source of his flow and enabling.
He understood that apart from Christ, he could do no good thing. He said, “I labor, and as a matter of fact, I labor with tremendous energy. But you know what? It is not really my laboring and my energy. It is the grace of God in me.”
You cannot get too proud when you realize it is all by grace.
Paul realized that if the Lord withdrew His living waters, Paul would collapse in a heap. His body was obviously breaking down with some problems. We do not know exactly what was going on there, but he continued to serve and had tremendous resilience, buoyancy, and energy.
Paul’s testimony was, “It is the grace of God. It is the grace of God.”
He was not saying that as some kind of phrase. He knew the experience of going to his Lord and saying, “Lord, I have nothing, but I receive from You by grace,” and finding the supply for all that he needed.
“I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me.” This was a reality to Paul. It was all by grace.
Even in grace, we can get a little heady at times. So there is also that aspect of the cross that continually worked in the Apostle Paul.
In 2 Corinthians, we have that familiar passage in 2 Corinthians 4. Even though others may have thought Paul was something great, something tremendous, Paul says, basically, in verse 5:
“For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.”
Then he goes on to share this tremendous revelation beginning in verse 7. Even though glory sometimes shone out of Paul’s life—there is a second-century description of the Apostle Paul that says he had a face sometimes as a man and sometimes the face of an angel, and it could be accurate—all Paul knew was the breaking of the vessel.
The glory that came out was the Lord’s, and the Lord kept that distinction there so that Paul would know he was just a vessel.
“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves;
we are pressed on every side, yet not straitened; perplexed, yet not unto despair;
pursued, yet not forsaken; smitten down, yet not destroyed;
always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body.”
The Lord, if we are faithful, continues to decrease us, continues to break things in our lives, and continues to keep us in a place of humble dependence if we are participating in this heavenly vision.
If we are participating in God’s purpose, it is so far beyond what a human can do that we have to hold on to the Lord.
Paul was very humble throughout his whole ministry. He knew the grace of God, and he knew the dealings of God.
Paul was an eccentric original. Although tempted to disobey the heavenly vision, because he was living in relationship with the Lord, serving by grace, and accepting the cross’s work in his life, the treasure could be seen through the life of the Apostle Paul.
That is really all I want to say tonight, except that vision produces eccentrics.
Are you such a one?
Vision produces originals.
Are you such a one?
The Lord wants you. There is something very unique and special about you.
To be called into His purpose is to be called into your place in that purpose—to be a participant, a contributor, in that tremendous church that the Lord is building in these days.
Are you one of those originals? Have you seen the Lord? Have you been in that place where He has laid hold of you? Are you now running back into your center—your newfound center—to discover why you were created and what the Lord has for you?
Among the young people here, can the Lord find some eccentrics who are willing to expend energy, even on their weekends, before the Lord and with the Word of God—studying, trying to understand, and trying to lay hold of things?
Are there some of us here who have come to the place where you have a gospel that is original?
I have found this to be an interesting thing. We are taught the gospel by men. We are taught the gospel by the Word of God. But when we see the gospel through a revelation of Jesus Christ, it gives us something unique in that gospel.
That becomes your way of witnessing the gospel.
Are you using somebody else’s pattern, somebody else’s sort of plan of salvation?
I think that if you see how the Lord laid hold of you and find that uniqueness of revelation, then something changes.
Paul saw it in a very unique way because he was laying the very foundation of our understanding of salvation. But certainly there is a uniqueness about your salvation.
If you see it in Jesus Christ, then there is a certain way that you uniquely live in the good of it. It is yours to share with other people.
I am also constrained to believe that there are some here, thank God, who are running the race with your eyes fixed on Jesus, your center. There are rivers of living water flowing through your life by the grace of God and by the work of the cross.
Oh, the Lord wants us to be part of what He is doing, not just those temporary things going on around us.
That heavenly vision involves eternal purpose: Christ glorified, the church glorified. Impossible, impossible. It is impossible for us to be such.
The Lord says, “It is possible with Me.”
Now, will you be part of what I am doing in preparing My Bride?
Eccentric originals. May the Lord make us that.
Let us pray.
How we worship You, Lord, when we see how You work in the life of a man—a sinner, even the chief of sinners, and an apostle, even the least of the apostles. Yet by the grace of God, he was what he was.
All we can say is that by the grace of God, we are what we are. Surely there is a purpose and a reason for us in the scheme of things.
Oh, Lord, we would ask You to lay hold of us in a fresh and living way. Grant hearts to rise up from our laziness, to rise up from our discouragement, and to rise up from our retirement and lay hold of that for which we were apprehended.
Lord, we believe, even in these last days, that You are doing an inward, deep, and wonderful work, loving us so much as to shake us out of our sleep.
Oh, Lord, give us eyes to see and the faith to enter in. Create for Yourself more eccentric originals—those who truly see You as the center of their lives and express You in the church in a living way.
Lord, I pray that there might be more original worship, that there might be more original prayers, that out of our relationship to You there could come a quality of life in the church that is not merely routine, but comes fresh from the throne.
Oh, Lord, grant us such brothers and sisters in our midst. We thank You that this is Your desire. Make it our heart’s desire as well: to follow after until we obtain; to be found in a righteousness not our own, but a righteousness by faith in Christ Jesus.
May we find ourselves in the church—in its unity, in its beauty, without compromise. Oh, by the grace and mercy of God, let us participate and be a testimony of that church.
Lord, we ask for Your help. These are heavenly matters. These are things too high for us.
Yet, Lord, we sense that this is Your heart’s desire. We say, “Oh, Lord, only You can transform us. Only You can take us into this heavenly matter.”
Lord, we pray that You would do it. For Jesus’ sake, we pray.